How shall the mighty river
reach the tiny seed?
See it rise silently
to the sun's yearning,
sail from a winter's cloud
flake after silent flake
piling up layer upon layer
until the thaw of spring
to meet the seedling's need.
Make tender, my heart:
release through gentleness
Thine own tremendous power
hid in the snowflake's art.
Silence is the language spoken by solitude. There is something awesome and breathtaking about real silence; it is numinous, pulling us out of self-containment and calling us toward the invisible. Spiritual seekers "home in" on silence as homing pigeons to their roost, because therein lies the language for personal communication with the sacred. Silence accompanies us into our innermost selves where we are present to the sacred. When word breaks into that kind of silence, there is communion.